In Wärmeland (In Hot Country) is a project which consists of two main elements, created between 1996 and 1999 and shown at Parkhaus in Berlin. The linking theme is the artist’s response to porn magazines.
The first element is a ‘catalogue’ to the exhibition in the form of a stitched booklet, containing a loose pictorial narrative of two lesbian lovers, made from a series of monotone watercolours. Accompanied by words from the pornographic lexicon – ‘cool’, ‘baby’, ‘ֹErlangen’ (climax) and ‘krach’ (crash), the women act out a lesbian encounter which manages to combine voyeurism with a sense of real-world desire.
The second element is a series of thirteen small-scale three-dimensional dioramas, which continue the theme of lesbian encounter into a colourful and varied display of scenarios and backgrounds. The doll-like naked women and their plastic accoutrements inhabit a painted-background world which is close enough to reality to imagine them as real people, yet clearly Barbie-world enough to be seen as playthings. The resulting clash of realities leaves both interpretation and response to the viewer.